


Snow in a Field of White Tulips

by jagwriter78



Category: Fringe (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, F/M, Family, Subject 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-11
Updated: 2011-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:55:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26046886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jagwriter78/pseuds/jagwriter78
Summary: Just by looking at the amount of the boxes and the care that had been taken by sealing them and making sure they would survive decades of dirt and rot, he knew who Subject 13 was.
Relationships: Peter Bishop/Olivia Dunham
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1


    When he had agreed to help move and catalog the boxes from the Jacksonville day care center, Peter hadn't known what he had gotten himself into. The shipment to the Harvard lab had come in late the afternoon before, so the fifty two boxes still sat scattered around the entrance area of the lab. The labels had come off most of them, some had water damage from an unknown occurrence while others had fallen victim to the curious assaults of mice and rats.
    
    While Walter was indulging himself in some experiment he didn't even want to ask about, Peter was moving boxes, shifting contents from cardboard boxes into plastic containers, all the while labeling them properly and cataloging every single item he had come across.
    
    Fifty two boxes that all had to do with the Cortexiphan trials in Jacksonville. Fifty two boxes that contained the reasons of why sixteen children had their lives changed in a daycare center in Florida. And one of those children was Olivia. Peter knew that within these boxes, he would inadvertently find traces of her and discover what Walter had done to her that neither he nor Olivia could remember. Since most of the files, tapes and other items he had found in the boxes were labeled with subject numbers rather than actual names, he felt relieved. While part of him wanted to know what had been done to Olivia, what had changed her that made her tick the way she does, part of him rather wanted not to.
    
    So he just kept on shuffling things, assigning item numbers to boxes and containers that each had been labeled with year and a subject number…. until he reached a stack of plastic containers that each had two words written on them in black marker. Subject 13. Just by looking at the amount of the boxes and the care that had been taken by sealing them and making sure they would survive decades of dirt and rot, he knew who Subject 13 was.
    
    For a long moment, he just stared at the boxes in front of him, trying to decide what to do with them. He couldn't just open them, take the contents outside and catalog them, pretending he didn't care about what he was holding in his hands. When it came to Olivia, everything was different - because he did care deeply about her. For an hour, he succeeded in pushing those four boxes out of his mind while he sorted through different boxes, different files and different people's life. But the nagging still remained, the nagging that Subject 13 had been so special that she had required not only one but four boxes of her own.
    
    He didn't really know whether he was going to open them or not when he hauled them into the empty office at the back of the lab. He just knew that they needed to be separated from the rest. Whatever he was cataloging at the moment would eventually go into the Massive Dynamic archives, and he didn't want Subject 13 to end up as another box of files, notes and tapes in some dark and lonely underground archive. Subject 13 wasn't just a number to him. Subject 13 was the woman he loved.
    
    Peter didn't know how long he sat in that chair, elbows on his knees and rubbing his cheeks while just silently staring at the boxes that sat near the door, one stacked on top of the other. Tempted to call Olivia, he had reached for his cell phone twice, but always had placed it back in his pocket before making the call. There inside those boxes lay Olivia's past, a past she couldn't remember, and maybe also a past she didn't want to remember. A past he wasn't so sure he wanted to know about either. Whatever had happened in that daycare center in Jacksonville lay inside those boxes, and once opened, there was no going back ever to not knowing. Peter was staring at not only one but at four Pandora's boxes.
    
    And he wasn't going to open any of them, at least not now without Olivia being there. He would go home that day and tell her what he had found and then they would decide together what they wanted to do about them. It was for Olivia to decide whether they would remain sealed, whether he would go through them alone or if they would do it together and whether they would end up in the Massive Dynamic archive with the rest of the trial material. Until then, these boxes would be locked away.
    
    So Peter got up and placed his hands on the top box, trying to move the entire stack to the back of the office so it could be hidden behind other boxes where no one would look for them until they had figured out their fate. He kicked the bottom box lightly which caused it to slide across the floor for about a foot, taking the three boxes on top with it. He managed to move them about halfway through the lab until he accidentally hit the edge of the table and the weakened construction of one plastic container on top of the other began to sway. Frantically, he reached for the two boxes in the middle to keep them from falling, but the one sitting on top slid further across the edge and came crashing down onto the floor.
    
    Papers went flying across the room, a couple video tapes slid under the table and a stack of photos spilled from the box. Without even looking at any of it, he pushed the papers and the photos back into the folders they had fallen out of before he reached for the box and sat it upright on the floor to place the precious contents back inside.
    
    That was when he saw what was peeking up from the very bottom of that box – a couple of drawing pads. The one most visible to him had a cover that had been artistically colored by a young child. Colorful flowers were drawn on the yellow cardboard and six letters had been scribbled among them. O – L – I – V – I – A. Even before he realized what he was doing, he was holding the first sketch pad in his hands, his fingers tracing the red, blue and green letters that made up her name. Those scribbles, the way her name was written… it all looked so happy.
    
    It was like he was drawn in by an invisible force when he flipped open to the first page. But what he saw here wasn't so happy anymore. It was as if he was staring right at the devil. A face completely colored in red, teeth that looked more like fangs of a wolf or a tiger and dark black eyes staring up at him adored the page. He didn't know what to make of it. So he flipped it over to reveal yet another image of this monster, followed by another and yet another version of this devil. It was all he found, page after page, the same gruesome face staring up at him. Shaking his head slightly, he placed the pad on the table in order to be flip open the second book he held in his hands. The pictures he saw where different. They no longer held the gruesome face that was all he had seen in the previous book. The first few pages were of animals, flowers or colorful mandalas until the sketches of people started to appear.
    
    First, it was just a brown haired boy he saw, standing among white flowers he thought looked like tulips. Then the blonde girl appeared next to him in the pictures. First, at a distance, then closer and closer until in the last picture, they were holding hands. And in every picture that Olivia had drawn, they were standing in a field of a white tulips. It wasn't until he flipped to the last page that his fingers started to tremble and the pad almost slipped from his grip. It was the names that were written under the children that sent his heart and mind racing. The boy and the girl, holding hands and standing among the tulips, carried the names Peter and Olivia. The kids in the picture – it was them. Him and her. But he couldn't remember, and he was sure neither could she.
    
    He dropped the pad on the table and just stared at it. Peter and Olivia…. They had met as kids, an encounter in a field of white tulips that neither of them could remember but that obviously had had such an impact on young Olivia that the pictures in her sketch book had changed from the drawings of the devil to a sweet encounter with a young boy named Peter that had made her smile again. His fingers traced the carefully drawn children, the long blond hair the girl had, the smile that was drawn across her face before they traveled to the middle of the picture, just about where their hands were locked.
    
    It was at that very moment when an old thought began to creep up in his mind, one he hadn't had in a long time. From the very first moment he had met Olivia Dunham in that hotel in Iraq, he had felt a strange connection to her. He had never been able to explain it because he had never experienced something like that before. It hadn't been just attraction he felt towards her, it more had been as if he had known her his whole life, as if, at one point on his life, they had been one. And now seeing all these pictures, he knew why.
    
    From the distance, he heard Walter call for him. Quickly flipping the pad closed, he flung them both back into the box, then dropped the other folders that had fallen from it on top. Within a minute, the whole stack of boxes was neatly sitting next to file cabinets. The sharpie markings were hidden towards the wall, and the boxes looked as if they had been sitting there forever. Peter looked at them, pondering, until he opened the lid of the top box again and reached for two the sketch pads at the bottom. Whatever Olivia's decision was concerning the case files concerning Subject 13, whatever was happening with them, this pad… it didn't belong with them. These pictures she had drawn as a kid, they were part of her, part of her childhood, and strangely enough, also part of his childhood.


	2. Chapter 2


    The drawing pads were safely tucked away inside his pea coat when Peter walked into the Bishop family home, Walter following suit. Olivia's car was parked towards the end of the driveway, so he wasn't surprised to see her sitting at the dining room table, sifting through several different files that lay scattered all over the table. Quickly looking up at him, she rewarded him with a smile and a short "hey" before she turned her attention back to the papers in front of her. He mirrored the smile as he approached her and placed a kiss on the top of her head.
    
    "Bringing home work?" he asked, his gaze following Walter who walked past them and vanished into the kitchen without even saying a word.
    
    "Just finishing up some things for the last case," she replied absentmindedly while scribbling down notes on the yellow notepad in front of her, "Shouldn't take long."
    
    "Good. Cause you and I have to talk."
    
    Her head jerked into his direction in reaction to the serious tone in his voice. He reached for a chair next to her and sat down. For a while, he just looked at her, studying her face, trying to remember the face of the little girl Olivia that he had seen in pictures before. But he couldn't. He just couldn't.
    
    "What?"
    
    She rested her elbow on the table, bracing her face with her hand while she looked over at him with a smile. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she'd catch him staring at her like that, with a look on his face that she couldn't quite place. It was always accompanied with the faintest of smiles playing across his lips… and that smile, it was missing now. Peter quickly looked over his shoulder towards the kitchen, and not seeing Walter anywhere, he felt comfortable enough to broach the subject.
    
    "Remember I told you that all of Walter's research was shipped up from Jacksonville yesterday?"
    
    She just nodded at him, "You found me in there, didn't you? You found my file."
    
    Reaching inside his coat, Peter drew out the sketch pads and placed them on the table in front of Olivia. For a moment, she just stared at the books, then her fingers traced her name on the cover, causing her to smile. As a child, she had loved to draw, she remembered that. Mostly flowers, all kinds and in different colors. Sometimes it was animals, fluffy sheep, cats and dogs, again in all kinds and colors. She remembered the fridge in their kitchen plastered with crayon drawings that she had done. Rachel had always gotten so upset and frustrated with her because their mother rarely had pinned any of hers on the fridge. She couldn't remember why it had always been hers and never her sisters that had cheered up the kitchen fridge, but when she flipped open the first book, she immediately was reminded why.
    
    The dark eyes of the devil staring up her… that was what Rachel had always drawn, mimicking the dark and gruesome sketches she had made as well. That was not something to hang on the kitchen fridge at all. Olivia flipped over the page, not wanting to talk about what Peter had obviously already seen, but once again was greeted with a picture of a man with a red face, dark eyes and teeth that looked like fangs. Page after page, it was all that she had drawn as a kid, and she didn't want to remember. She just wanted to forget. Forget about her stepfather hitting her, hitting Rachel, hitting her mother. About the scratches and bruises she had to explain in school, convincing everyone that Olivia Dunham was just one clumsy little girl.
    
    She felt Peter's hand on top of hers, "Open the other book."
    
    She just shook her head, unable to look at him as she pushed the sketch pads away from her. This part of her life was long over, and she had successfully blocked out the pain and the desperation that her stepfather had caused for a long time. But looking at these drawings she had made as a child, she could see that little Olive was crying for help. And no one had come to her rescue.
    
    "Olivia, open the other book," Peter urged her, and when she didn't oblige, he flipped open the second book himself, revealing the picture of a boy and girl, holding hands and smiling. Her fingers immediately traced the face of the girl when she recognized herself in the picture. There, indeed, seemed to have been at least a few happy moments in her childhood, even if she couldn't remember most of it.
    
    "You remember the boy?"
    
    She shrugged her shoulders and turned to look at him, "I don't know. Could have been Nick maybe? Apparently we were really close when we were kids."
    
    "You don't remember, do you?"
    
    "Remember what?"
    
    Peter flipped to the last page, pointing at the names that were written under the children. She recognized her own handwriting, but what she read made her gasp. Peter and Olivia. Her eyes flashed back to Peter who was now shrugging his shoulders at her, "I don't remember that either."
    
    "You found that in Walter's research?"
    
    "They were buried at the bottom of one of the boxes. I didn't mean to look at them but they fell out and I just… that's us, Olivia. That's you and me as kids. And I don't remember it. You don't remember it. Why don't we?"
    
    "I don't know."
    
    "What don't you know, dear? Can I help?"
    
    Walter appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, nibbling on an éclair he had found lying around somewhere. Olivia quickly flipped the pads closed, but Peter stopped her from shoving them across the table and burying them under the many folders that lay scattered around. She glared at him, knowing exactly what he was about to do.
    
    "Actually," Peter got up and held one of the books up for Walter to see, "there is something you can help us with."
    
    Walter's eyes fixed on the cover as he walked closer, "Oh, I remember that! You just loved to draw pictures as a child, Olivia. You were quite the prolific little artist. We had to get you a new sketch book every other month at least."
    
    "What's this, Walter?"
    
    Olivia got up and walked away from the table, running her hand through her hair while Peter flipped to the last page and held it up.
    
    "Oh, isn't that a cute picture! Peter and Olivia. She even got that awful haircut right that your mother had insisted on."
    
    "Walter, we never met as children," Olivia uttered. She'd finally stopped her pacing and stood right next to Peter.
    
    "Oh, of course you did. And you gave all of us quite a scare when you…" Walter's voice trailed off when he realized what they were trying to tell him, "You don't remember."
    
    "No, Walter, we don't," Peter replied, "But apparently you do. What's this all about? Olivia and me, was this all planned since we were kids?"
    
    "Now that would be preposterous," he waved the éclair at them before he took another bite out of it, "Love isn't something that can be planned. Maybe you can help it along a little, but you can't just lock up two people in a room and tell them to love each other. You know that. When you two met as children, that was fate."
    
    "Fate," Olivia flung her hands into the air, "I was how old when I drew this? Seven, maybe eight? I was a kid. And you talk about fate?"
    
    "You don't understand…"
    
    "Right, we don't, Walter," Peter cut him off mid-sentence, "What happened to us as children? What happened to us in that field of tulips? What did you do to us!"
    
    "Nothing!" Walter exclaimed, quite exasperated, "When your mother took you to the daycare center for the first time and you saw young Olivia, you changed Peter. You had been so closed off, so distraught, and in so much pain… just like you, Olivia. So afraid of going home. You two looked at each other and there was something in your eyes, Peter…"
    
    They looked at each other disbelievingly while Walter continued to tell his story, "You set fire to one of the rooms, Olivia. You were so scared by what you had done, you ran away. And then suddenly, we realized that you were gone as well, Peter. You two had been gone for hours until you just came back to the daycare center as if nothing had ever happened. I don't know where you went or what happened, but you both came back and you were different. You weren't hurting anymore, Peter, and you Olivia, you weren't frightened anymore."
    
    "Can you make me remember?"
    
    The words had come out of Olivia's mouth before she had even realized what she had said. Peter smiled at her warmly and reached out his hand, gently cupping her face, "I wanna remember, too."
    
    Walter shook his head, "I don't know. It was such a complicated process to remove parts of your memory while keeping others that I don't think it's reversible. Both your memories have been repressed for so long that I am not even sure they are still accessible to you even with help."
    
    "So we'll never remember," Peter said sadly as he turned towards Walter who answered him with a "Never say never," before he stuck the rest of the éclair into his mouth and vanished in the kitchen again.
    
    They just stared after him, wide eyed, not really knowing what to do now. Olivia finally broke the silence when she reached for the pad that Peter had placed down on the table only a moment before. That picture she had drawn when she was a girl, it had been created with so much detail that the love it held was more than obvious. The happiness in her life that was reflected in the picture had been brought to her by a young boy named Peter – the man who was bringing happiness into her life now.
    
    Peter's arm slipped around Olivia's waist from behind and he pulled her closer to him, resting his chin on her shoulder, "They look happy, don't they?"
    
    "They do," she replied, leaning back into his embrace, "I wanna remember that. What I remember of my early childhood is mostly about my stepfather and the way he treated us. I wanna remember what it felt like to be a happy kid. I seemed to have been happy with you."
    
    "What would change if we remembered?" he asked which caused her to look up at him, a frown on her face, "I mean, it wouldn't change anything between us, would it? I'll still love you no matter what. And you're happy with me now, are you not?"
    
    She just smiled at him over her shoulder, "I am. It's just…" her voice trailed off for a moment, trying to find the right words for what was on her mind, "I was experimented on as a child. I had to go home to an abusive stepfather. And there was this little boy who apparently managed to make me smile during all that. And now, looking at us… Whenever I really needed someone to pick me, to make me stronger, to believe in me, you were there. From the time we've been kids, it's always been you."
    
    "And I'm always gonna be there."
    
    Olivia turned around in his embrace, her hand immediately cupping the back of his head.
    
    "Thank you," she whispered quietly before her lips touched his in a gentle kiss.


	3. Chapter 3


    Peter was woken by the chilly air surrounding his naked body. Crooking open an eye, he noticed Olivia sleeping next to him, her hand clutching at the sheets and the comforter she was tightly wrapped in. He chuckled as he snuck his hand under the sheets, letting it slide over the curve of her hips. A soft moan escaped her, and she immediately moved closer to him, inviting him into the warmth under the sheets without even opening her eyes.
    
    "I was cold," she murmured into his chest as she settled herself in a comfortable position, enveloped in his strong arms.
    
    "Says the person who had the sheets and the comforter," came his sleepy reply.
    
    "I was dreaming of snow. It made me cold."
    
    Peter closed his eyes again and let the words revel in his mind. She had been dreaming of snow. He had been dreaming of white tulips. Even in his sleep, the pictures young Olive had drawn seemed to haunt him whereas Olivia… she didn't seem to be affected at all. Snow and tulips – two things that clearly didn't go together. And suddenly, a memory shot right through his mind and he was wide awake.
    
    "You dreamed of snow?"
    
    He felt her breathing stop for a moment, then she exhaled slowly, as if on purpose, her warm breath tingling against his bare chest, "Can we talk about this tomorrow?"
    
    "Snow falling in a field of white tulips."
    
    His words caused her to crook an eye open at him, "What are you talking about?"
    
    "I remember."
    
    And now, Olivia was wide awake as well, "You remember snow in a field of white tulips? I think you've been looking at those drawings too much."
    
    He shook his head at her as he reached his hand out towards her, his fingers gently tracing a half circle under her right eye, "He hit you."
    
    "He hit me a lot. He hit all of us."
    
    That was when a memory flashed in front of her eyes. Sitting in the middle of a field of white flowers, all she saw were burnt tulips at her feet. She hadn't meant to burn them, all she had wanted to do was find solace in the beauty. But her hands had still been hot, and no matter how hard she tried to cool them down, every tulip she touched burnt to a crisp. She closed her eyes and buried her face in Peter's chest.
    
    "It was my hiding spot," she whispered as she felt his hand gently stroking the small of her back, "No one ever went looking for me there because no one seemed to care. Except for you."
    
    "I care about you," he placed his chin on top of her head, "I always have."
    
    He could feel her lips forming a smile as they gently brushed against his skin. His mind was still reeling about the bits and pieces he started to remember about that fateful night in that field of tulips. Most of the context was still lost to him, but what had come back to him was enough. Olivia's tear stricken face was soon replaced with her smiling face when she held her hand out for him to take. He had been the one to give her back hope.
    
    In the darkness, he could feel Olivia's hand searching for his, so he reached up for her, their fingers intertwining instantly. She pulled back her head a little so she could look up at him, "I've cooled off."
    
    He chuckled slightly, reveling in the notion that she did remember as well. He brought their locked hands up to his lips and gently kissed the back of her hand.
    
    "You gotta imagine how you want things to be," he started, and without hesitation, Olivia finished, "then you can try and change them."


End file.
